Clinical and Biomedical Research (Jul 2008)

In Vitro Differentiation of Embryonic Stem Cells Into Cardiac-Like and Neuronal-Like Cells

  • Ana Helena da Rosa Paz,
  • Ana Ayala Lugo,
  • Paula Barros Terraciano,
  • Luise Meurer,
  • Eduardo Pandolfi Passos,
  • Elizabeth Cirne Lima

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 28, no. 2

Abstract

Read online

Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent cell lines with the capacity of self-renewal and a broad differentiation plastic-ity. They are isolated from preimplantation embryos and can be cultured in vitro for long time without losing their pluripo-tency. Embryonic stem cells can also differentiate in vitro with the proper combination of growth and differentiation fac-tors, cells will differentiate into more advanced stages of embryogenesis generating different adult cell type. In the pre-sent study, we induced the in vitro differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (line R1) into cardiomyocytes and neu-ronal cells. These differentiations were evaluated by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction to verify presence of tissue-specific markers.

Keywords